NZ has fallen into a 'crisis and response' pattern on climate disaster, experts say. Billions have been spent on storm recovery since 2023, while key climate adaptation funding and planning tools have been cut. My story looking at last week’s storms www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

My comments for Carbon News on the withdrawal of BlackRock from its proposed $2bn #CleanTech fund in #Aotearoa #NZ, plus the wider political economy of #ClimateFinance. Also h/t to @brettchristophers.bsky.social for his due diligence at the time. www.carbonnews.co.nz/news/36390/f...

This week in The Transition(s) Lab, I've tried to get my head around the issue of the non-equivalence of biological removals and fossil emissions, specifically in the context of #Aotearoa #NewZealand. I welcome feedback to improve future versions!

This thread responds to Prof. Christian Dunn’s Telegraph piece on #climate communication. I argue it misdiagnoses public disengagement, underplays escalating scientific risk, & reproduces a media narrative that has actively shaped, not merely reflected, public resistance to climate action 🧵

Want a quick brain-dump on some of the reports published over the last few weeks around #COP30? The Transition(s) Lab has you covered with a special COP30 edition of The Pointillist, a quick-fire collage of reports, charts and links that caught my eye. the-transitions-lab.ghost.io/the-pointill...

I’ve written about #COP30 for The Transition(s) Lab. When the gavel came down in Belém, there was no major diplomatic breakthrough, but that’s not all that COPs are about these days. In a multipolar world, that’s likely a good thing. Read more here: the-transitions-lab.ghost.io/the-shift-2-...

Today is the day!!! Existential Politics is out in the world! Read about why we’re doing climate policy wrong (too focused on measuring emissions) & what we should do instead (focus on $$ to constrain fossil asset owners & expand green asset owners). Just in time for #COP30.

repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself

One of our main goals is to support inter- and transdisciplinary work to achieve real-world impact. If you're interested in regenerative mahi and thinking outside the box, check out our website: regen.aut.ac.nz @autnews.bsky.social @dvdhll.bsky.social @mribo.bsky.social @lanipai.bsky.social

What does #regeneration mean to you? We asked some of our steering committee and they had some great answers. Check it out and let us know if we missed anything! @autnews.bsky.social @dvdhll.bsky.social @mribo.bsky.social @lanipai.bsky.social #regenerate #regenerative #ecology #planning

When your government mandates an LNG import facility and allocates $200m in subsidies for new gas field developments...

Five eyes: three half open, two closed shut?

I'm not sure many folks realize just how persistent the warming from CO2 is. Here is a set of 1000-year climate model runs (using FaIR) simulating one year of CO2 emissions (40 gigatons in 2020); a millennia later the world has not cooled back down!

electrify coffee electrify beer an electrified future is deliciously near www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

This is why I feel ambivalent about *some* degrowth critiques of renewables. A shift to renewables is likely to reduce energy-related GDP (possibly following a temporary boost when everyone invests in the kit). Lesson: up or down, GDP is just an unreliable guide to much of what we want to do.

There are many good & necessary criticisms of the transition to renewable energy & electrification. There are also many bad types of criticism, one of which – I'm sorry to say – is the focus here for @newsroom.co.nz Come for energy politics, stay for Hannah Arendt! newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/22/n...

There are many good & necessary criticisms of the transition to renewable energy & electrification. There are also many bad types of criticism, one of which – I'm sorry to say – is the focus here for @newsroom.co.nz Come for energy politics, stay for Hannah Arendt! newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/22/n...

New research on the politics of climate change in Aotearoa New Zealand by @samcrawley.bsky.social & Ralph Chapman. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

All of our inflationary episodes have been driven by increases in global oil prices. Our country runs on diesel and petrol. It's an *input cost* for everything. But... to tackle inflation we increase the price of money, cos TINA. [2/n]

Electricity means efficiency ⚡ which also means fewer materials and less energy than you might think. An explainer on materials and the energy transition for Rewiring Aotearoa: www.rewiring.nz/watt-now/ele...

Hi. I have an article in the new Policy Quarterly. Upfront, the article is about policy mixes. Backhandedly, it is about the narrow, flat-footed and highly idealising style of policy analysis that predominates in Aotearoa New Zealand. Link here: ojs.victoria.ac.nz/pq/article/v...

NEW | @hajmedd.bsky.social and I spent the last several months digging into McKinsey's work with its fossil fuel clients. Here's our story with the Guardian, ft. Koch Industries, China and a controversial Saudi government program to hook poor countries on oil www.theguardian.com/business/202...

DISPATCH @katemac.bsky.social @thepolycrisis.bsky.social A Trumpist repeal of the climate portions of IRA, CHIPS would harm the US. Think of it as the opposite of global reaction after IRA passed. It creates billions of dollars in opportunities for other countries. buttondown.com/polycrisisdi...

There is no “game over” in the fight against climate change. Today, it remains our collective task to continue to bend the arc of global emissions towards net zero. The next battle begins today. heatmap.news/ideas/trump-...

We need to talk about #IndigenousDataSovereignty in nature markets. This is a message that the Toha Network will be taking to the UN Biodiversity Conference COP16 next week. #GreenSky #ClimateSky #adapt #AoNZ theconversation.com/nature-marke...

You've heard of 'carbon tunnel vision'... At Rewiring Aotearoa, we argue for 'electric-panoptic vision' – that is, an integrated view of opportunities, risks, interconnections and trade-offs. Read our explainer here: www.rewiring.nz/watt-now/peo...

We need #ClimateAction now. As much as possible. As soon as possible. That’s why the Toha Network has hardwired its data economy with a sense of urgency. ⏱ How? Read Toha's new explainer, ‘Introducing the Time Value of Action’, here: substack.toha.network/p/introducin...

I've got some comments here on an article that called for "behavioural manipulation" - i.e. the "engineering of consent" by marketing techniques - as maybe "our best chance at avoiding ecological catastrophe." My view, in short, is nah. news.mongabay.com/2024/03/ecol...

Inaugural report out by Rewiring Aotearoa. In short, electrifying your house will reduce your cost-of-living *and* your contributions to creating a fossil-fuel ravaged hellscape. www.rewiring.nz/electric-hom...

Inaugural report out by Rewiring Aotearoa. In short, electrifying your house will reduce your cost-of-living *and* your contributions to creating a fossil-fuel ravaged hellscape. www.rewiring.nz/electric-hom...

Reports on 2023 GHG emissions and trends are starting to come out, please find attached the social media conversation you are about to have

“Your most truthful contributions to collective reasoning are unlikely to be your own individual arguments, but your useful criticisms of others’ rationales.” (Just the encouragement I needed to reboot one stalled writing project.) www.programmablemutter.com/p/in-praise-...

'Business suits of the future' Auckland Weekly News, 14 March 1929. I wish this had caught on, honestly.

In Palestinian folklore, even the olive trees observe Christmas, kneeling on Christmas Eve. This year, the holy night is a night of mourning.

Now open access! "The cave" by the late, great J.G.A. Pocock. From Plato, Moses, & Laozi through Machiavelli, Hobbes, & Rousseau to Marx, Mao, & Strauss, read his witty "short history of philosophy", written in the 1970s & published @global-ih.bsky.social (2016): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

UN report says more than 570,000 people in Gaza are now ‘starving’ due to fallout from war

Oh hi! They told me this is where you can post imperfect articles without being called dumb? NZ will meet first target for transport emissions cuts without EV subsidy, Simeon Brown says www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Absolutely my experience. Huge wasted labour into applications that are rejected for blatantly arbitrary reasons. Or you win research funds for projects w poor alignment to research goals, which only gets done in evenings & weekends coz uni doesn’t reallocate workload, even while claiming overheads.

One of Aotearoa NZ’s major contributors to political thought. www.intellectualhistory.net/news/john-po...

Rather than pursuing the mirage of collective decision-making on perfectly equal terms, those of us aiming to protect & enrich democracy must ask how ordinary people with relatively few resources can effectively organize themselves to contest pervasive capture by powerful elites.

"If you look at the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a lot of the big countries who were stockpiling nuclear weapons never joined, but they stopped stockpiling nuclear weapons." Coal producer Colombia has joined the fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

It is rare to see direct clashes at COPs. But we just witnessed one at today's plenary session at #COP28, when Saudi Arabia's plea to focus on adaptation & emissions instead of fossil fuels was followed by this remarkable statement by Colombia (my transcriptions). But see for yourselves...

Unless we consider a number of other factors — permanence, albedo, co-emitted GHGs, asymmetry — balancing CO₂ emissions with removals (net zero) will not achieve the intended climate goal. Conversation: theconversation.com/carbon-remov... Article (free link): rdcu.be/dsYVk

6yo: “what is ‘revenge’?” Me: “it’s when someone does something bad to someone, and they do something bad back.” 6yo: “ooo that’s not a good idea!” Me: “not it’s not.” 6yo: “because they’ll get revenge and then they’ll get revenge and then they’ll get revenge and then they’ll get revenge…”

If Seymour wants a debate on the constitutional future of our country, here’s something the Matike Mai Aotearoa working group prepared earlier. This is the kind of constitutional debate we need. nwo.org.nz/resources/re...

Ok - look - I had to do a line-by-line breakdown of ADNOC CEO and COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber's remarks to Mary Robinson, because they are *so bad* Ultimately they showcase something simple: fossil fuel companies use words as weapons to protect their bloody profit and even bloodier expansionism

‘The scale of destruction is beyond description’: 700 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza over the last 24 hours.

Yer friendly reminder that *CCS on fossil assets significantly increases demand for fossil fuels (because it’s energy intensive) (so producers love it) *the CO2 from gas is a bigger problem than the methane www.theguardian.com/environment/...

If ‘phase out’ is so disquieting to Adnoc’s Sultan Al Jaber, then it must be the right thing to say. More power to the elbow of #FossilFuelTreaty